António Antunes - The Splendor of Portugal

my dear lady, Mr. Eduardo, Dona Isilda, bowing solemnly and repeatedly, guests looking out the window of the car as they drove off and there they were, still waving good-bye

the pickup trucks parked next to the ditches, the dogs always returning with snouts low to the ground, whining, limping, the smell reached all the way to Luanda when the wind changed directions, the government troops wearing colored ties, mirror-lensed sunglasses with metal frames as if they were silver

speaking of mirrors how long has it been

flower-print suspenders holding up their military pants, the soldiers inviting me to get out of the pickup

“Ma’am”

the flight of birds overhead, their wings made of felt, screeching, the sea below, Mussulo, the coconut palms, we walked down to the beach, my parents and I, my father in a cream-colored suit and cream-colored Panama hat, my mother in the shade of her pink parasol, me in my straw hat that tied under my chin, we brought lunch in a basket covered with a cloth which we spread out on the sand with the containers of food on top of it, a bottle of juice for my mother and me, a bottle of wine for my father, my mother never took off her gloves or her shoes, sitting on a little stool cooling herself with her fan, my father fanning himself with his newspaper, the birds overhead weren’t the same as the ones circling above the ditches in Corimba, with their dusty woolen wings, but I wasn’t afraid because it was daytime, the soldiers, even the one in the patent-leather ankle boots, weren’t going to rob me or take me with them or do me any harm, there wasn’t a single darkened room in the house in Malanje, they raised their machine guns, lined me up in their sights, disappeared behind their guns, the way their muscles hardened, the way they all shut their mouths, and me running in the sand toward my parents, my straw hat sliding down to the nape of my neck, happy, without needing to ask them if they liked me.

FINIS LAUS DEO

ANTÓNIO LOBO ANTUNES is the internationally acclaimed author of Knowledge of Hell , among others. Born in Lisbon in 1942, Antunes was trained as a psychiatrist and served in the Portuguese Army during the Angolan War of Independence. He lives in Portugal where he continues to write.

RHETT MCNEIL has translated work by Machado de Assis, Gonçalo M. Tavares, and A. G. Porta.